Since coming out as a landscape painter last year, Simon Bayliss has been pursuing outdoor painting as a mode of artistic enquiry. Bayliss lives in St Ives, Cornwall and his relationship to the Cornish landscape and sea feature strongly in his work, juxtaposed with humorous erotically-charged imagery and text. His exhibition at Eastside Projects will feature recent paintings, ceramic ‘pasties’ and poetry.
Simon has also produced a series of painted slipware mugs as an edition to accompany the show and, in December, Eastside Projects will host the launch of the Artist Tea Towel Company. This project, which he has initiated, commissions contemporary artists to produce artworks for this humble yet functional domestic canvas. The company is a registered social enterprise and profits will be reinvested in new commissions and public events.
Frantic Romantic is part of Shout Festival, Birmingham’s Festival of Queer Arts and Culture which runs from 10–20 November. Tea towels and mugs will be on sale at the Eastside Projects Winter Art Fair on 2 and 3 December – a two day event which will showcase work by independent artists and self publishers from the West Midlands and beyond and feature limited edition prints, books, affordable sculptures, paintings, zines, an art raffle, music and more.
Simon participated in Syllabus I, 2015–16; an alternative peer-led learning programme that supports ten artists across ten months. Syllabus is a collaboration between Wysing Arts Centre, Eastside Projects, New Contemporaries, S1 Artspace, Spike Island and Studio Voltaire and is now in its second year.
Simon Bayliss (b. 1984) lives and works in St Ives Cornwall. His residency and solo exhibition at Hestercombe Gardens and Gallery near Taunton, Somerset, in 2015 spurred his interest in ‘en plein air’ painting. A recent solo show as BLISS (a collaboration with Lucy Stein) at Kingsgate Workshops, London, presented a film of the artists undergoing past-life hypnosis inside Cornish Iron Age fogous. Recent BLISS curatorial ventures include SAMHAIN a Halloween music, film and performance event, at CAST, Helston, Cornwall. Bayliss also works with Susie Green making dance music, recently performing at World is Sudden curated by CIRCA Projects with Giles Bailey, The Old Police House, Gateshead. Bayliss produces the monthly radio show Squirming the Worm on NTS, and is soon to launch Artist Tea Towel Company.
